(2014)

“Its very presence on that stage raised issues around legitimacy, what we value culturally and who owns and holds particular spaces and where different kinds of art can take place. Riotously entertaining.” Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

The Live Art Community Musical by GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN is a project which brings together a ‘misfit’ cast, drawn from an open-call. This group of approximately 20 participants work with us over a short period of time, to create a rendition of a well-known musical, in a one-time-only version that charges headlong into a bare knuckle fight with virtuosity, legitimacy and taboo.

The Live Art Community Musical explores exertion, desire, cliché and the epic, and it skips its way through a toe-tappingly problematic landscape of stereotype – the kind we convince ourselves has been wiped clean off the map by now.

It is an ongoing and adaptable project and has many musicals and communities in its sights.

The world premiere of The Live Art Community Musical project was commissioned by SPILL Festival of Performance, and took place on The New Wolsey (Ipswich) main stage on October 31 2014.

For the SPILL premiere, The Live Art Community Musical was The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

The Live Art Community Musical (The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas) was conceived and devised by the company, with Eilidh MacAskill and Gareth Cutter

Direction: Hester Chillingworth

Lighting design: Nigel Edwards

Musical Direction & Piano: Matthew Sisson

Keyboard: Matthew Poxon

Steel Guitar: John Davis

Set & Prop maker: Morven Mulgrew

Additional Costume: Mette Sterre

Assistant Producer & Project Manager: Mary Osborn

Marketing Manager: Vic Shead

Project Assistant: George Easterbrook

Project Assistant: Ella Simms

Photography: Tom Mountford

Co-production partners:

A SPILL Commission presented in partnership with the New Wolsey Theatre. Co-produced by Cambridge Junction, ICIA University of Bath, Colchester Arts Centre, Norwich Arts Centre and Roehampton University.

Supported by:

National Theatre Studio, Battersea Arts Centre, Nuffield Laboratory, Live at LICA and Queen Mary University of London.